


a fool for you

by tenienteross



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M, Post-RE6, lots of Ada's inner monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 08:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15432672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenienteross/pseuds/tenienteross
Summary: Ada closes her eyes and sucks in a deep breath. She knows why she’s doing this, why she’s barely standing in front of this specific door. But accepting the truth isn’t easy. She’s inclined to take a step back and forget she’s ever entered the building.The lock rattles and it startles her, eyes wide opened at the sound. Hidden in the dim shadows from inside the apartment, Leon shows up under the door frame—standing in front of her, just meters away. Ada simply smirks, her hand moving away from the wound.“Long time no see, Leon.”





	a fool for you

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this in [Spanish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15179159). Linking it in case you'd rather read it in that language!

There’s blood smeared all over her fingerprints when she reaches for her side. The black blouse manages to disguise the red. Its silky cloth brushes against the pouring cut, still wet and fresh. Another pang of pain pierces her body. Leaning on the door’s frame, she tries to avoid stumbling over.

Ada closes her eyes and sucks in a deep breath. She knows why she’s doing this, why she’s barely standing in front of this specific door. But accepting the truth isn’t easy. She’s inclined to take a step back and forget she’s ever entered the building.

The lock rattles and it startles her, eyes wide opened at the sound. Hidden in the dim shadows from inside the apartment, Leon shows up under the door frame—standing in front of her, just meters away. His face shifts from mild irritation at being disturbed to utter surprise, deep blue eyes fixed on her, unable to believe it’s actually her standing there. The same confused look he wears whenever they meet.

Ada simply smirks, her hand moving away from the wound.

“Long time no see, Leon.”

-

“What’s this?”

Leon watches the pendrive on his hand with bewilderment and disbelief. Ada doesn’t answer immediately, choosing to stand impassively next to the door with crossed arms. There’s a pale, warm light coming from the apartment’s interior. She also catches traces of a song coming from a speaker, barely audible. Ada likes the idea of Leon finding small moments of peace among the mess their lives have become.

Finally her eyes meet his and she shrugs, nonchalant.

“Information,” she puts concisely. “TerraSeva is not very well regarded by everyone, as you might expect.”

“What do you mean?” 

Ada breathes deeply, resting her back against the entrance door. She thinks of it as a likely escape—whether she’d be escaping from him rejecting her or him inviting her into his home, she doesn’t really know.

“There are different crime syndicates and terrorist groups who have found a common enemy in TerraSave. You’d be surprised how specific their plans can get,” she adds, finger pointed at the device. “You’ve got all the evidence and data right there.”

“What groups? Where did you get this?” he insists, even though he’s very aware Ada doesn’t provide easy or straightforward answers. In spite of the lingering pain from her wound, she decides to maintain the usual enigmatic act.

“That doesn’t matter, but you should warn your friend.”

The veiled mention to Claire Redfield startles him, his eyes wide open while his lips move in an attempt to say anything. His expression is one of obvious perplexity. An image Ada has found quite endearing as the years had passed—a glimpse at the innocent, good-natured rookie cop she met a long time ago in Raccoon City. He hasn’t completely disappeared after all. She treasures that thought.

“Ada, I…” Leon hesitates, struggling to find the right words. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing.” That’s her answer before getting ready to open the door and making her way out of his place. Before her fingers reach the doorknob, Leon strides towards her. His arm steps between her and the exit.

“That’s all?” he blurts bitterly. She doesn’t respond, so he continues. “Why, Ada? Why did you come here in the middle of the night to tell me this?”

“You could think of it as a gesture of goodwill, don’t…” The stabbing pain crosses her abdomen again and her face twists in pain. She feels her legs faltering, as if she were about to fall. Her sight becomes blurry. Fresh blood gurgles from the wound, enough that it’s noticeable. The smell would have given her away in front of someone like Leon, used to blood in his everyday life as much as she is. He grabs her swiftly by the shoulders and waist, before she falls onto the floor.

“Ada!” she hears him scream, almost scared. Her body leans on him unwillingly.

“It’s just a scratch,” she whispers the lie, trying to hide the wound. Leon’s fingers are faster and find it, pressing them against the source of the bleeding in a pointless attempt to stop it.

“Sure, a scratch,” he groans. Suddenly, Ada feels how he’s guiding her to the couch in the living room, seizing her by the waist.

She doesn’t protest for once and allows him to take her, still disoriented by the crushing pain and the blood loss. Leon lays her down on the couch, careful to not bump her head against the couch’s arm. She feels drowsy, but the situation is familiar and it brings memories back. Memories from Raccoon City.

“Leon, there’s no…” she desperately tries to stand up, undermining the gravity of the damage.

The attempt is in vain, because Leon stops her immediately.

“Don’t move. We need to take care of that wound _now_.”

The next minutes happen like a series of brief memory flashes. Leon slightly lifts her blouse up to check the wound and the poor job of a dressing she had done. Then he vanishes. In his absence, Ada can hear the sound of flasks clashing and doors opening somewhere until he reappears before her, carrying a small medical kit in one hand and needle and thread in the other.

Facing the inevitability that she’s playing the role of an (actual) injured woman in this scenario, Ada takes a deep breath and decides to relax for a bit. Her gaze is fixed on the white ceiling, stealing a few glimpses at Leon. He’s focused on cleaning and stitching up her wound. She barely feels how the needle punctures her flesh, having grown accustomed to it as part of her life. The warmth from Leon’s fingers? She wasn’t so used to that, although it wasn’t new. It wasn’t bad either.

Ada can sense his body, his breathing so close. It’s in moments like these where she truly knows she’ll never be able to not miss him. No matter how much time passes, their confrontations and their meetings by chance. Her attempts to move forward and forget what he means to her matter even less.

Ada knows how to deceive and lie. However, Leon remains her greatest professional and personal failure, without a doubt.

He is also the best thing to ever happen to her.

-

“That should work.” She’s woken up from her light sleep by his exhausted voice. Kneeling beside the couch, Leon stares at her and the blue from his eyes glimmers faintly. His forehead is sweaty and there are traces of blood left in his fingers. “How are you feeling?”

“Like a car had just run over me,” she answers, patting the new, clean bandage. “Wasn’t planning on passing out on your living room.”

Leon can’t help chuckling, wiping his forehead clean with the back of his hand. 

“My pleasure. Maybe now it’s a good time to tell me what happened and how you ended up like this,” he adds, pointing his chin at the dressed wound.

It’s her turn to chuckle dryly.

“Part of the job, you know.”

She tries to sit up again and it proves to be an aching action, her face shifting to conceal the pain. Leon rushes to help her, taking a seat beside her on the couch. It’s like every little thing tonight had happened to bring them closer since she entered the building, as if they were two magnets drawn together inevitably. She had promised herself this would be a simple favour—that she would vanish as soon as the information had been given.

Leon remains a stain in her record once more. But feeling him so close, Ada knows deep down she doesn’t really care.

“You know, I could get used to receiving some answers instead of you dodging my questions forever,” he reproaches in a light mood that doesn’t hide his frustration. 

Ada glances at him with a downcast look. For the first time in many years, she feels fragile and guilty. Human.

“My client had sent me to a crime syndicate’s headquarters to retrieve… confidential data. The information about TerraSave showed up among the things I dug out.”

“I guess that wasn’t your priority, right?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“And yet you went to all the trouble of securing it.”

“Yes.”

Leon makes a pause, his look fixed on her wound.

“What about that? What’s the story?”

“Let’s say, my little detour caused some… predicaments. I’m sure you have figured out what they were cultivating down that headquarter.”

“Bioweapons, of course,” he laughs, resignedly.

“I thought it was just a simple cut,” she adds, covering the blouse cloth over the bandages with her hand. “I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

“No, you couldn’t…” Ada notices a change in his look, how he’s staring at her—more gravely, with a hint of something she would rather not name. No one ever looked at her the way Leon did. “Why did you take the risk?”

Ada knows the answer. She also knows that, despite the games and obscure answers, he probably does too. This could be the perfect chance to voice out loud what they both acknowledge. Ada settles for a silent reply.

-

“You can stay and rest here until tomorrow.”

He’s not looking directly at her when he makes the invitation. He hides away under the pretense of putting back the medical supplies he had used to sew the wound up. Likewise, she glances away when he talks, concealing her shocked expression. It feels like a kick in the stomach, mixed up with a warm sensation.

“I think I have interrupted your days off long enough,” she replies, wrapping her arms around herself. She winces, the wound still throbbing achingly. 

Leon laughs.

“You made it more interesting. I’m even grateful.” As he finishes tidying up, Leon seems to realise the implications of what he has just said, alarm bells ringing in his head. “I wasn’t talking about you showing up injured in the middle of the night. I didn’t…”

“Don’t worry, Leon. I know what you mean.” She smirks wickedly at the end of the sentence. Only Leon would worry about her feelings—not something many people did.

Leon nods and walks over to the counter that separates the small kitchen from the living room. He starts putting back his tools and medicines into cupboards and drawers.

“You never take days off, right?”

Ada glances up at him, slightly startled by the question.

“No. Not really.”

Because she doesn't know who she is outside her professional persona. It is her life. There isn't left anything beyond the spy. Habit has ..made it more bearable, as everything else.

“Then maybe that,” he eyes the wound, “was a warning.”

“Maybe.”

Leon replies with a frustrated, almost tired sigh.

“Well, listen to me for once then and have some rest. Please. You can sleep on the bed.”

“There’s no need…”

“I insist.”

They stare at each other. Even though she knows this isn’t the wisest decision, she can’t find it in her to reject him once more, going back to this cat and mouse game they have played for years. 

Finally, Ada yields.

“Alright, Leon. We’ll do it your way for tonight.”

“Then you could help me with these as well, then,” he grins charmingly, a pack of beers hanging from his hand.

A whole life filled with experiences is warning enough to know she should back down and leave this instant. She can heal from every injury—a broken heart is different, though. But she feels so exhausted and the tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach is back. So Ada ends up producing the shadow of a smile and nods silently.

-

“Your turn.”

“Okay.” Leon sips from the beer while considering his next question. “John. Was he ever real or just part of the deception?”

Ada averts his gaze, feeling a pang of guilt when Leon mentions John’s name. She can’t shake that off, even after all these years. An old wound that kept on feeding on her sense of blame—something she had managed to silence for a long time. Leon notices her jaw clenching.

“You don’t need to…”

“He was real,” she cuts, facing him. “He was a good man. Too good for the kind of work he was involved in his last living months, if you ask me. Umbrella was suspicious of him. He deserved better than that. He deserved better than me.”

She can almost see the retort taking shape in Leon’s lips, but in the end he decides to bite his tongue.

“I’m sorry”, he simply says. Ada perceives honesty in his words. She knows when someone’s lying. Leon has never lied—not to her, at least . “Your turn,” he remarks after a brief silence.

Ada weighs her next words carefully, her voice almost trembling at the prospect of saying them out loud. If the night’s rules were honesty and moving away from the past years, she would go down all the way. Alcohol has a lot to do with her decision, too.

“Do you trust me?”

The following silence is unsurprising. Ada holds his gaze, seeking an answer in his eyes and fearing what she could find at the same time. She wouldn’t really blame him for not trusting her—she was ready for the truth. It was just a matter of moving on. Accepting it. 

She doesn’t expect to hear laughing.

“You don’t make it easy, to be fair,” he chuckles drunkenly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “But I do. I trust you and I know I always will in some twisted way. Despite everything else.”

She gulps discreetly, feeling her throat very much sore and unable to produce a sound. It’s her turn to be left speechless, probably wearing that same confused expression she has witnessed so many times in Leon’s features. 

Despite the inner turmoil, Ada remains calm and collected. She only has one question worth asking left.

“Why?”

Leon smirks devilishly and takes another swig from his beer.

“That’s two questions.”

After so many years, some of her has rubbed on him as well. For the first time, Ada is very aware of how frustrating it is to have your questions sidestepped. She purses her lips into a smile.

“Touché.”

-

The short trip from the couch to the bedroom has her head spinning. She has finally agreed to sleep on his bed, after Leon insisted again when they had finished drinking every beer on sight, surrounded by empty cans scattered around the couch.

Her legs feel wobbly. She thinks she’s going to stumble down when the back of her knees meet the bed’s edge. Her hand travels to the wound instinctively. The jabbing pain has dulled a bit, turning into a light throb that promised new waves of discomfort the next morning.

“I’m starting to believe that mixing up painkillers and beer wasn’t the brightest idea,” he mutters amusedly, wrapping his arm around her waist while he helps her to sit down carefully on the mattress.

“It wasn’t,” she admits, flashing a slightly inebriated smile. Ada can’t remember the last time she had drunk like this, up to the point of not being able to control her every move. “It was worth it, though.”

She notices the hint of a smile in Leon’s face, despite the lack of light.

“Call me if you need anything.”

His hands pull away from her, leaving behind a strange sense of emptiness. Probably driven by her intoxicated state and its inhibitions, Ada catches his hand before Leon can move further and give her a cordial goodnight.

He turns to face her, just as shocked as she is. Ada stammers—something that has almost never happened before. She hesitates to put words to what she wants. She shouldn’t want it. Yet this time Ada feels vulnerable, just like that night in Raccoon City. Facing her own, inescapable death had put things into perspective, which had led to her moving (almost silly) confession while lying his arms. Feelings and attachments were something she has been taught to suppress at any cost. But she hadn’t cared that night and she doesn’t care now.

“Stay,” she whispers, a bashful plea. Her grip on his hand isn’t strong, leaving him the door open to reject her freely. That’s what he should do—what he should have done in the past. He deserves better than her.

But Leon (too kind for his own good) always chooses her. Always stays by her side.

-

Morning rays of light peek through the blinds’ slits when she opens her eyes. The room is still dimly lit, only the alarm clock’s numbers shine brightly on the nightstand. Ada’s eyes flicker, adjusting to the pale light. She stares at the numbers. It’s almost 6 am.

She conceals a yawn, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she settles under Leon’s arm, which is wrapping her completely. Her back rests against his chest. She senses every breath against her nape, his shirt’s fabric against her skin while she is wearing it. 

She should have left an hour ago to be on time for the pick-up. Her client wouldn’t be pleased. However, her body struggles to move. Ada knows the same story will repeat itself, just like it has already happened. One night together, then she’d vanish into thin air without leaving a trace. That’s what Ada Wong does, right?

Despite the feeling of certainty, this time it’s both exactly the same and completely different. She’s so tired, more than she has ever been in the past twenty years. Leon’s hand is resting over her belly, next to that scar that’s still a constant reminder of what happened in Raccoon City—of what happened to her. It was Ada Wong’s scar.

She simply rises her arm dully, turns the alarm clock’s shiny numbers away and settles once more inside Leon’s embrace. Smiling peacefully, Ada drifts into sleep again.

**Author's Note:**

> RE2 remake reveal has basically reignited my neverending love for this franchise... and my first OTP EVER. My beautiful, messed up children *wipes tear away*


End file.
